Dennis Rodman brought precisely the goods to North Korea for which, apparently, Kim Jong Eun had been hankering: Bottle after bottle of alcohol, signed basketballs, and a chance to affect a pose of congeniality toward the West. This was cultural diplomacy at its most naked, with both parties joyfully using the other, and no one quite understanding what the result would be.

Regionally, the Dennis Rodman visit accomplished a few things: It was a clever effort to upstage the announcement of the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo, a sad “substitute for victory” by the United States immediately following the cancelled visit of Robert King, and a sign to South Korea that a cultural or sporting opening could be in the offing.

But what did the trip mean in Beijing? And why would the Chinese Communist Party be dissatisfied?

Consider the fact that one week ago, Kim told a group of North Korean performers that the “imperialists' ideological and cultural poisoning is getting evermore frantic." Such a statement, if anything more than pabulum, indicates a core alignment with the People’s Republic of China, whose media leaders have lately been pushing very much the same line. It must be comforting when a North Korean leader reads that a blogger has been arrested in Guangdong, for socialist internationalism is not undertaken out of altruism; countries that share a fundamental antipathy toward Western liberalism need to stick together for survival’s sake. Bending culturally toward the West is only done to a point, as the relative obsession with the theme of the collapse of communism by North Korean and Chinese media would appear to indicate.

So why would Kim Jong Eun run into the arms, literally, of an American pop culture symbol before so much as booking a ticket to Beijing?

Perhaps the answer boils down to a question of gifts. Kim Jong Eun took clear delight in the things brought by his exotic companion from New York, and even reciprocated by providing Rodman with a lovely bust, not of Kim Jong Il, but of the former NBA champion.

What a contrast to the offerings left by Chinese comrades! In October 2011, Vice Premier Li Keqiang brought a painting of two cranes, symbolizing the need for the Kims to get along with their southern neighbors. (Yes, there were two back in those halcyon days of yore; now Kim Jong Eun is left to gesticulate incessantly all by himself.) When new Vice Premier Liu Yuanchao arrived in Pyongyang this past July 25th to commemorate the Korean War armistice, he brought not only a sleek vase, but a dumpy tea set with six cups. Not only was the tea set cheap, the kind of thing that could be bought in an airport waiting area, it was an unsubtle indication of China’s desire for the North to resume Six-Party Talks toward denuclearization.

The North Koreans have since reciprocated these uncharacteristically clumsy symbolic gestures with their own forms of comradely punishment. When China’s would-be envoy to the Six-Party Talks, Wu Dawei, arrived in Pyongyang on August 25th, he was greeted with a new holiday called “Day of Songun,” which featured performers on stage next to Unha missiles and long essays by Kim Jong Eun on the need to remain faithful to the gun, the nuke, and the unmanned aerial drone (as well as his dead ancestors).

Wu was then forced to burn one of his afternoons in Pyongyang at the Victorious Fatherland Liberation War Museum, wondering if and when a Chinese leader would be able to "do a Deng" and criticize the hideous statue in its main hall for having been constructed to look more like Kim Jong Eun than Kim Il Sung, or for the apparent lack of reference to Chinese soldiers in the displays. Chinese leaders are, more likely than not, rethinking their firm support for the succession of Kim Jong Eun, whose diplomatic behaviour has been more erratic and hostile to China than that of his father.

* The viewpoints expressed in Guest Columns are not necessarily those of Daily NK.